Let Babelfish (or Google translate?) destroy your business

We’re back from our holidays in the Canary Islands. It was awesome, in many ways.
The coming month (probably 😉 ) you’ll be reading all about it.

We’re starting here (for the small text you’ll have to check the big size of the image):

The Babelfish screw-up

(the copyright of this -horrid, I’m sorry- design lies with the one who made it, and it wasn’t me)
So as a design/marketing guy I always assumed that when you promote your company or activities, you make sure that everything is perfect. If you need multiple languages, you have the original text professionally translated, or at least have it double-checked by someone who knows a few words in both or all languages you have the text translated into.
Clearly this wasn’t the case when they made this little flyer and it made me laugh out loud when I read it.

This is a buggy:

Image courtesy http://www.imcaonline.es

And buggy in Spanish is buggy in English (that’s easy!). But if you do your homework right, buggy in English is not only this sporty extreme little vehicle, but it’s also these sporty little vehicles below (pram, stroller, coming in a variety of versions, with 3 wheels, 4 wheels, sun hood, etc. etc.):

Image courtesy of http://www.babyuniverse.com.au

So when you translate buggy from Spanish to English to German, it might just turn out as “Kinderwagen”, which means pram, stroller.
And here this company is sporting a colorful flyer promoting with a big German header “Excursions guided in prams”. Not only are there some really weird translations in the headers, but if you check the small text, they claim to have “Routes long and half”. The excursion includes “assurance” (assurance for what, really? Is it THAT unsafe?) and there’s something weird with 7-year-old major children.

And the above example was only one of many, many translation comedies I found.
Saving money is good, but save it from the correct places, I say.

I don’t typically fancy an assured excursion guided in prams with 7-year-old major children…

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